Arctic ice melting at 'amazing' speed, scientists find

Scientists in the Arctic are warning that this summer's record-breaking melt is part of an accelerating trend with profound implications.

Norwegian researchers report that the sea ice is becoming significantly thinner and more vulnerable.

Last month, the annual thaw of the region's floating ice reached the lowest level since satellite monitoring began, more than 30 years ago.

It is thought the scale of the decline may even affect Europe's weather.

The melt is set to continue for at least another week - the peak is usually reached in mid-September - while temperatures here remain above freezing. 'Unprecedented'

The Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) is at the forefront of Arctic research and its international director, Kim Holmen, told the BBC that the speed of the melting was faster than expected.

"It is a greater change than we could even imagine 20 years ago, even 10 years ago," Dr Holmen said. "And it has taken us by surprise and we must adjust our understanding of the system and we must adjust our science and we must adjust our feelings for the nature around us."

The institute has been deploying its icebreaker, Lance, to research conditions between Svalbard and Greenland - the main route through which ice flows out of the Arctic Ocean.

During a visit to the port, one of the scientists involved, Dr Edmond Hansen, told me he was "amazed" at the size and speed of this year's melt.

"As a scientist, I know that this is unprecedented in at least as much as 1,500 years. It is truly amazing - it is a huge dramatic change in the system," Dr Hansen said.

"This is not some short-lived phenomenon - this is an ongoing trend. You lose more and more ice and it is accelerating - you can just look at the graphs, the observations, and you can see what's happening." Thinner ice

I interviewed Dr Hansen while the Lance was docked at Norway's Arctic research station at Ny-Alesund on Svalbard.

Key data on the ice comes from satellites but also from measurements made by a range of different techniques - a mix of old and new technology harnessed to help answer the key environmental questions of our age.

The Norwegians send teams out on to the floating ice to drill holes into it and extract cores to determine the ice's origin.

And since the early 90s they have installed specialist buoys, tethered to the seabed, which use sonar to provide a near-constant stream of data about the ice above.

An electro-magnetic device known as an EM-Bird has also been flown, suspended beneath a helicopter, in long sweeps over the ice.

The torpedo-shaped instrument gathers data about the difference between the level of the seawater beneath the ice and the surface of the ice itself.

By flying transects over the ice, a picture of its thickness emerges. The latest data is still being processed but one of the institute's sea ice specialists, Dr Sebastian Gerland, said that though conditions vary year by year a pattern is clear.

"In the region where we work we can see a general trend to thinner ice - in the Fram Strait and at some coastal stations."

Where the ice vanishes entirely, the surface loses its usual highly reflective whiteness - which sends most solar radiation back into space - and is replaced by darker waters instead which absorb more heat.

According to Dr Gerland, additional warming can take place even if ice remains in a far thinner state.